Go iLawn

Challenges in an Evolving Industry

Landscape
companies of all sizes are being pushed to achieve increased capacity
and better margins. Today’s business climate requires contractors to
squeeze higher volume and productivity out of the same 24-hour day.

“It
used to be that you bid a job, established a relationship with the
customer and if you did a good job, then you got more work,” said David
George, vice president of operations for Engledow Group. “Now it’s all
about the numbers.”

Even
successful companies like Engledow can no longer rely on reputation and
brand recognition alone to drum up sufficient work. Enduring
relationships between customers and their contractors will always be
paramount in the landscape industry. But, as George asserts, the bottom
line has claimed a place of elevated importance.

One
source of this shift is economic. In a sour economy, customers are
especially prone to comparison shop bids, holding out for the most
favorable terms. Savvy contractors expect a shifting business climate.
Those companies nimble enough to dodge the scythe of bankruptcy are the
ones who allow their business plans the flexibility to evolve with the
times. The challenge then becomes to craft a system wherein Engledow can
turn around a high volume of bids at a lower margin.

Enter Go iLawn.

Digital solution for the digital age

Go
iLawn is an online measuring tool that helps landscape contractors
streamline the processes of estimating, marketing and bidding. The
system, developed by GIS Dynamics, Cincinnati, Ohio, allows contractors
to look at a property online and save views and measurements taken
from different angles. A company like Engledow can use Go iLawn to take
all the necessary measurements on a scaled digital picture of the
property. Those measurements can then be exported to Microsoft Excel,
along with any notes the contractor recorded about the site.

Go
iLawn also includes proposal building that allows contractors to come
up with photos and site conditions which, in turn, can be used to
generate a formal bid.

“The
goal that everyone here has in mind is to help contractors grow their
business and increase efficiency,” said Alle Rorie, business
development associate at GIS Dynamics. “Go iLawn makes site visits a
lot shorter, which gives contractors time to sell more work.”

Before
Go iLawn, contractors had to do all of their measuring work in the
field. They couldn’t take any steps towards finalizing a bid without
sending a crew out to gather the necessary data. It was a slow and often
inefficient process.

A
subscriber can access the Go iLawn website from any device with
internet connectivity (the one caveat being that the system requires
Flash Player and is thus incompatible with many Apple products). From
there, a street address is all the contractor needs.

With
one click, Go iLawn produces a satellite image of the location, along
with high resolution aerials. A toolbar on the site offers a number of
shortcuts for measuring area, linear distance, change in elevation and
square footage.

George
says that the system gets used frequently. For certain types of jobs,
Go iLawn has eliminated the need for preliminary site visits alto
gether.

When the
details of a job force a site visit, the ability to view the maps
beforehand and take early measurements saves both time and money.

“We
use Go iLawn for winter snow bids without visiting the location, but I
would never do a landscape job without attending the site,” said the
industry veteran. “That’s not to say Go iLawn isn’t still vital.”

In other words, Go iLawn provides the kind of low margin/high volume solution that the market demands.

“It’s
critical,” said George. In business today, “you have to turn more bids
out and improve your odds.” To that end, GIS Dynamics’ innovative
product is being used exactly as the company intended.